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An Encore for the ‘Smash’ That Wasn’t

In foreground, from left, Jeremy Jordan, Krysta Rodriguez and Andy Mientus from the TV series "Smash" rehearse "Hit List," which they will perform at 54 Below.Credit
Karsten Moran for The New York Times

As the characters from “Smash” would tell you — if they still had a television series on which to say it — not every show-business dream comes true.

When that NBC comedy-drama about the making of a fictional Broadway musical returned in February for its second season, its participants knew they had to overcome the low ratings and mixed reception of the show’s first year.

So “Smash” scrambled its creative team, adding actors, writers and composers and creating a subplot about another musical vying for glory in New York’s competitive theater world.

The ostensible purpose is to perform “Hit List,” the never fully shown, vaguely “Rent”-like rock musical from “Smash.”

For fans, these concerts offer a chance to connect one last time with cast members — and learn just what “Hit List” really was meant to be. For the no-longer-naïve “Smash” veterans, they are an opportunity to take stock of their experiences and to remind themselves that, although the series had its detractors, it also had some deeply devoted fans.

“It’s going to be a completely friendly, positive environment,” said Jeremy Jordan, a “Smash” cast member who will perform in the concerts. “That’s why theater’s so much better than television.”

Mr. Jordan, who was nominated for a Tony Award last year for his Broadway role in “Newsies,” was among the actors who joined “Smash” after its first season, which focused on two actresses (played by Katharine McPhee and Megan Hilty) chasing the lead role in a musical about Marilyn Monroe.

Despite the imprimatur of the show’s executive producer, Steven Spielberg, and the lofty expectations of NBC’s entertainment chairman, Robert Greenblatt, “Smash” had drawn fewer than seven million viewers per episode that season.

Within that modest turnout, the audience was divided like a “West Side Story” gang fight: on one side, the faithful Jets who appreciate musical theater wherever it is presented; on the other, the hostile hate-watching Sharks, who enjoyed seeing the series implode.

When Mr. Safran, a former producer of “Gossip Girl,” took over in the second season from the show’s creator, Theresa Rebeck, he drew inspiration from real-life Broadway seasons in which “Wicked” competed with “Avenue Q” and “Billy Elliot” went head-to-head with “Next to Normal.”

His idea, he said, was to invent “a scrappy underdog” show that would serve as a counterpoint to the Monroe musical.

As the “Smash” team explained it, “Hit List” was created by composers played by Mr. Jordan and Andy Mientus and starred Mr. Jordan’s and Ms. McPhee’s characters, who were falling in love with each other.

In a commentary on this fictional romance, this musical told the story of a pop singer who invents a new stage persona for herself and the songwriter who provides her with material. “She ends up taking his music and his songs, and she uses him for her glory,” said Justin Paul, who, with his composing partner, Benj Pasek, wrote three of the songs for “Hit List.”

“He’s got a special sound but no appeal,” Mr. Paul said, “and she’s got appeal but no special sound.”

If these nuances and meta-narratives were lost on the “Smash” audience, which shrank to fewer than three million viewers a week in Season 2, the TV show’s producers say they had bigger problems to contend with.

Based on early ratings for his “Smash” episodes, Mr. Safran said, “all signs pointed to it being over. It slowly — not even slowly, pretty quickly — became clear that it wasn’t coming back.”

Knowing that the series was on borrowed time, cast members reacted in different ways.

Mr. Jordan said he felt that many remaining “Smash” viewers “just watched it because they wanted to watch a sinking ship,” and that he found it difficult to watch his own performances.

In theater, he said, “You come out the stage door, and people are congratulating you. You feel good about yourself.”

With TV, however, “You’re sitting at home with your wife and your dog on the couch, in silence, cringing at the television,” Mr. Jordan said. “It’s a very removed experience.”

Krysta Rodriguez, who played the roommate of Ms. McPhee’s character and an on-again-off-again star of “Hit List,” said that even when things looked darkest for “Smash,” the series drew strong support from Broadway fans.

While she was in rehearsals this year for the musical “First Date” with the “Chuck” star Zachary Levi, Ms. Rodriguez said, “People would be pushing him out of the way to take pictures with me. He was on a TV show for five years, and he was like, ‘Who are you?’ I was like, ‘Between 42nd and 49th Street, I am the most famous person in this place.’ ”

Among the “Smash” viewers who genuinely appreciated the show was Jennifer Ashley Tepper, a musical theater producer and historian who is now director of programming at 54 Below and who organized the “Hit List” concerts with Mr. Safran’s input.

“Theater people were so picky about it, and weirdly wanted it to be a documentary,” Ms. Tepper said. “I’m like the biggest theater nerd on the planet — no one is more of a nerd than me — and I didn’t care that it wasn’t super-accurate to every detail.”

When she saw the “Hit List” performers gather for their concert rehearsals, she said, “I couldn’t stop smiling like a crazy person.”

The concerts will feature 15 to 17 songs from Season 2 of “Smash,” including a few that were never broadcast, and a book by Julia Brownell, a playwright and former “Smash” producer.

Ms. McPhee was unavailable for the concerts, so her role will be performed by Carrie Manolakos, a singer and actress who sang on the demo tracks for the “Hit List” production numbers on “Smash.”

Mr. Jordan said he anticipated that “there’s going to be some amount of camp involved” at the concerts, and that audiences should take them “with a grain of salt.”

“This will be a great ending” to the “Smash” story, he said. But audiences hoping for a Broadway or Off Broadway run for “Hit List” (which is still controlled by NBC) may wish to temper their expectations.

Because of an editing error, an article on Saturday about concerts at 54 Below in Manhattan based on a fictional Broadway musical in the NBC show “Smash” misstated the year Jeremy Jordan, a cast member of “Smash,” was nominated for a Tony Award for his role in the Broadway show “Newsies.” It was last year, not this year.

A version of this article appears in print on December 7, 2013, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: An Encore for the ‘Smash’ That Wasn’t. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe